Plan for “praying together”

There is still much to review regarding the “following of Jesus” as disciples, but for now we will prepare for our work of praying together in 2009. I suspect that some of you will not participate at all and that is fine. However, those called to do so, please proceed to read with great care what follows.

Even among those participating, the question would be, “But why to do it this way?” Is there any advantage to any other form of communal prayer? Well, when I was young (high school), I was told by several teachers that I should become a lawyer… and I will give you great arguments (with the light of the Holy Spirit) to prove to you that this is not just communal prayer, but a way to start Acts of the Apostles Book II…

However, let me warn you that some of you will feel deeply called to do it regardless of any human reasoning, and I know because it happened to me about 28 years ago when prayer became a way of life, and all due to grace. If you seek Him day and night, He gives in, like the judge to the widow of the biblical story, and therefore, we get graces never imagined even possible. In such time, prayer becomes not words to be “read” or repeated like a parrot or babbled like the pagans do, but as in my case, prayer is an expression of a relationship with God, and not to ask for “things” but for He and I to hang around together, but it is all His doing. In those days (and to the present time), I often felt a need to be present to Him during the day within myself, or at the feet of His Eucharistic Presence and/or in my brothers and sisters, most especially those in need, the homeless, the sick, the hungry… I started falling in love with them, as strange as it may sound… and all because I had received the grace to see Christ in their faces.

I have a story that will demonstrate this gift of the Holy Spirit of one day being able to fall in love with the poor. In the last 3 years as I was waiting for orders from above to sell my home and come to live with my son in this side of the US, I found myself noticing a homeless man, Mike H., age 58 at the time. Of course, he looked ancient. He would sleep in bus stops and come to our parish to warm up when they opened at 6 AM (after sleeping at below freezing temperatures and at times with many feet of snow on the ground). Our narthex, the space between the main doors and the inner modern style sanctuary which could sit many, was also very ample. I would see Mike in the corner trembling as I entered every morning for the 8 AM Mass. I befriended him and I became his chauffer.

Because I had purposely given away all the hundreds of thousands of dollars I made in my lucrative anesthesia practice of some 40 years, since the Bible says that God and mammon do not go together, I had no extra money to take him out of his poverty. So, most days I would give him $20 to cover his daily meals. After Mass, I would drop him at his favorite restaurant, McDonald’s, since the competition (another food chain) would notallow him in.On the first of the month I would take him to his post office box where he would receive $300 dollar check from the US Government and go to a far away Kroger supermarket in a wealthy side of town, where they would cash his check. Other Kroger’s would not do it for him. When I could afford it, I would place in a cheap hotel he frequented, some 30 minutes east from the parish. Mike would talk a lot about those nights when he was warm in a hotel room and able to shave and take a shower the following morning!!! There is so much we take for granted…. But for this last Christmas (2007), my gift was to pay four days (Dec.23 to Dec. 26) in a nicer hotel near my parish in order for him not to be homeless for Christmas. This Christ could at least have this time around a place at the Inn!…

Through the 2-3 years, several parishioners used to give me money to give to him. In other words, they had not received as yet the gift of loving Jesus in the person of this homeless man, and would not deal with him directly. For this past Christmas of 2007, people gave me a total of $144, which I gave to Mike as I dropped him exactly one year ago today for these four days of “luxury” living for Christmas. He was simply sooo happy. About a year before, I had prepared him for the Sacrament of Reconciliation and with the cooperation of my then pastor, Mike went to confession with him. So, as my home was placed in the market, I asked my Lord if He could consider taking Mike home to Him because he was going to lose his chauffer.

And my Lord, in His great Mercy, did so. On April 14, 2008, Mike was found dead in a motel of apparently natural causes. He was a diabetic without any medical care. He had a sister who had put away Mike’s small inheritance money from his deceased Mom, precisely for his funeral, and I went to see him to an uppity funeral home, right across from the Kroger that would cash his check…. His remains were placed in the cemetery across the street. I was able to give the news to the Kroger desk girls who cashed his check, and they cried and said they would miss him despite his dirtiness and mal odor. This proved to me how we are one Body in Christ…

Let me give you another example of how He makes us lovers of others: because I have been so sick and unable to do anything, last Sunday I decided to watch some football … I used to follow all games and stats and players, but for the last 15 years or so, I have lost the lust to do it (by grace, no doubt, the attachment was done with). However, I keep up “in general” with teams and how they are doing. I was watching Eli Manning and his quarterbacking and these two teams playing each other, Carolina and NY Giants , both excellent this year. Suddenly, I started loving all of them, players, coaches, referees and the fans present in the stadium, but soooo much, that I found myself begging my Lord for His mercy for them and prayed over and over for the Mercy of God to descend on their souls. I then realized that I loved them like Jesus would: with all my heart and as a mother loves the baby in her womb.

In another occasion, some 3 years ago, I found a book by Fr. Robert De Grandis, and I believe the title is “Healing with the Eucharist”, meaning healing with the Mass, and studied it and made a small summary of how I can offer each part of the Mass of the many parts (from the Sign of the Cross at the beginning and penitential rite, to the liturgy of the Word, to the homily to the offertory, Consecration, etc.) for the healing of someone else or for ourselves. I contacted the author in Washington, D.C., now in his old age and retired, in order to be sure I had the spirit of his book in this summary, and he wrote that it was exactly right. So, I was moved by the Holy Ghost to offer 400 + healing Masses for one person in the nextyear +. So, again, there is a time in our lives when prayer for others becomes a need… This man needed to be prepared for a future work for the Kingdom and in the Roman Catholic Church.

The topic I want to stress is that we are responsible for each other because we are parts on One Body, the Body of Christ, and we are responsible even for others outside our Christian beliefs. How good is it to chant over and over a very well known song that we are one Body in Christ and do not act on it? And also, the Bible is clear of why we have to pray for each other (Jesus did in John 17 an even prayed for that unity of hearts), and care for each other. The Good Samaritan understood it to perfection. We were created in love, out of love, and to love. Others should know we are Christians just by our love!…

In this communal prayer not only will we pray for each other to be able to truly “act” on our call to be disciples in the three ways of denial of self, embracing our crosses and following Him, and pray for MERCY for our families and the world, but we will do something very different… Hopefully by next April (Feast of Divine Mercy in the Catholic Church, April 19), we will start a web site on Divine Mercy. This website will have many links in time and as it grows. Example of links:1 Saints and the mercy of God in their lives. 2) The Bible and God’s mercy and how He showed it to Israel and to us gentiles. 3) The Roman Catholic Popes and Divine Mercy. 4) Divine Mercy and discipleship. 5) Divine Mercy and the call to holiness. 6) St. Faustina Kowalska and Divine Mercy. 7) The Mother of God and Mercy. 8) Blogs regarding stories of mercy in our lives for the laity. 9) Blog regarding stories of mercy by ministerial priests to ministerial priests.

By the way, when I started this blog site on Nov. 1, I informed of its existence to a Bishop from yesteryears, someone who knows me very well, in case he wanted to peek at it and advice if he thought it had to come down for whatever reason. This was done in an unofficial way but I wanted to be respectful of the Church. Eventually, I can see how the Holy Spirit will want to have a priest (or priests) supervise the content of the web site. At that time, He will provide the help He wants for it and its proper pastoral care. I have no doubt about it.

But the truth is that the web site will be JUST “CNN’ing” on Divine Mercy and by the way, some of you who know me, will have to help me out to take over different links to upkeep them. Yet, words and information are just that, words… We need a power house behind it… We need our “sacrifice” behind this web site, as we try very hard to live “discipleship” at each present moment, and offer this sacrifice to our Father through ourcommon priesthood received at our Baptism,united to the ongoing sacrifice of the Passion of His Son, the High Priest, PLUSunder our constant call for God’s mercy for all of us; THISwill make this site an attraction for those whom the Holy Spirit will BRING! So, we will create and upkeep the web site, we will pay for its spiritual power with our sacrifice of living discipleship to the best of our ability united to His Passion, and the Holy Spirit will do the rest, and we will be answering the call to evangelize others, to take the Good News to the world, as we start Acts of the Apostles Book II. And how to defeat Satan who will fight us tooth and nail? Easy… Just living the Truth in our lives as Jesus did when He encountered him, will suffice to contain Satan.

It will also be a great exercise in humility. When we organize evangelization our way, we tend to want to be in charge… and to analyze its success in human terms and not God’s. This way, we get out of the way and sort of “hire” the Holy Spirit to do what He can only do… We cannot save anybody… We can only save ourselves by cooperating with the graces necessary to do so, and then, we offer our lives (in this case attempting to live discipleship as best as possible) and things will happen…!!! I promise you!

Our group will be known as the “Work of Mercy” or Opus Misericordiae (in Latin) and it is a work of mercy because not only we ask it of God for the rest of us, but we will be merciful to our neighbor by offering our sacrifice of “living” as disciples for their salvation. We will never know the numbers coming to God through our sacrifice and work of mercy, and yet we will enter heaven one day and when asked how we followed Jesus while on earth, we will show God the Father, our “common work” as His Body, united as one for the others. We will become co-redemptors with Him without even knowing it.

However, we must show a determined determination (words of St. Teresa of Avila, XVI C Spanish mystic) of becoming one praying Body of Christ who clamor for His mercy day and night, and dedicated to hearing the Word of God and acting on it in the daily living as “true” disciples, and knowing quite well that if we show to “work” for the Kingdom in His Terms, He will do the rest in our souls and the souls’ of our family members, our Church, our country and in the whole world.

By becoming the spiritual power house behind this web site and as explained so far, then we can also become the “back-up” help to our shepherds at all levels, Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Religious men and women, Pastors of all Christian denominations. We become a gift for them as they, in their humanity, struggle in their personal way to Calvary and for holiness of life as they bring the Good News to the ends of the world. The Holy Ghost will be our General and we will become whatever little part of the cross-word- puzzle He intends us to be, in His great plan of salvation of the human race.

I also have to warn you that many miracles for yourselves and family will be your pay back… I have found out first hand that the more I do my thing, the more I busy myself to answer my call to holiness according to the Book of Instructions He left us, and most especially as I accept my crosses, I find more and more extraordinary goodness among my four sons and many other people… I also find plenty of persecution just as Jesus spoke of, but each one came to add a pearl of great price to my diadem of discipleship. I grew more and more in understanding His ways which are not my ways, and obtained the desire to submit to His ways always.

Since all of you are very busy with the holidays and entertainment involved, I will have only one more blog in 2008 and early next week, where I will share a list of “general” petitions for ourselves, the world and the Church at large, and will speak of how we can spend 20 minutes a day in prayer and how best to do it. You must do your own inventory of needs you have, whether personal or for family, etc. and add or subtract to the general list coming soon.

May Baby Jesus also called by the Prophet Isaiah, Wonderful, Counselor, Prince of Peace, be born in your hearts anew. May all of us become pregnant with Him and run in haste to take Him to many places and souls where He could not go, if not by our carrying Him there with us… Merry Christmas!